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',,- REPOOT ON USE OF WATER LARAMIE RIVER BASIN IN CCLORADO H. T. Person and R. M. Gildersleeve August 1951 For a long period of years there have been diversions from the Iaramie River and tributaries in Colorado, for the irrigation of the hay meadows and PJ,sture lands within the natural basin, and also for use on lands lying outside the basin. The latter diversions have been made by several ditches across the divide and a tunnel discharging into the Cache La Poudre basin. The largest and most important of the transmountain works are the S~line ditch and the Laramie- Poudre tunnel. The existing collection facilities for the tunnel were generally being used. about 1929 or 1930. Frior to the end of the 1938 irrigation season, the trans- mountain diversionists exported out of the basin such amounts of water as were available to them under the limitation by United States Supreme Court decrees of 33,500 acre feet annually for the tunnel and S~line, and an additional rela- tively small amottrlt for other transbasin works. Also, until the end of the 1938 season, although the Supreme Court had lim- ited the right of the meadowland ditches to "divert and taken from the stream an amount of 4,250 acre feet per annum, these ditches freely diverted such amounts of water as their users considered necessary for the irrigation of their lands. During the years 1939, 1940 and 1941 there vms a competitive race for water between the meadlowland users and the transmountain diversionists, in accordance with rulings of the Courts that there had been in effect a mass allocation to the Colorado water users of 39,750 acre feet per annum, and that the two classes of users could divert in the amounts of their respective priorities until that total amount had been diverted. In 1939, however, after all headgates had been closed by Colorado officials at the time when 39,750 acre feet had been diverted, the